ulmonary embolism (PE) is a major health problem associated with a significant morbidity and mortality particularly in older patients. The overall annual incidence is approximately more than 1 case per 1,000 person-years, 1 but this increases markedly with advancing age. [1][2][3][4] The incidence is distributed extremely unevenly over the ages: 1 case per 1,000,000 person-years for children aged less than 15 years, 72.4 cases per 100,000 person-years for adults aged 40-54 years and 2.8 cases per 1,000 personyears for those aged 85-89 years. 2,3,5 Autopsy series have shown that PE is responsible for, or at least accompanies, approximately 12% of inhospital deaths and this rate increases to 20% for the patients aged 70 years and over. 6,7 Kniffin et al reported a 1-year mortality for PE of 39% in patients older than 65 years, 3 and Sakuma et al reported that the relative risk of mortality from PE was 417.76 for the patients aged over 79 years. 8 The high incidence of PE requires physicians to maintain a high level of suspicion in order to make a prompt diagnosis and initiate appropriate treatment, which is even more important for elderly patients who have higher mortality rates. On the other hand, physicians have to deal with the challenge of diagnosing suspected PE in elderly because older patients with PE may present with atypical clinical features in the absence of the usual indices. However, the clinical presentation of PE in the elderly population has not been extensively investigated. In the present study, the Circulation Journal Vol.69, August 2005hospital records of patients with documented PE were analyzed according to age, and risk factors, presenting symptoms and signs, arterial blood gas (ABG) analysis, electrocardiographic (ECG) and echocardiographic (ECHO) findings and, pulmonary vascular obstruction scores (PVOs) as a marker of severity of the disease, were compared for a better definition of the disease characteristics in the older population. Methods Study Population and DesignThe study was carried out at Gazi University, a large teaching hospital in Ankara. Hospital records between 1998 to 2003 from the Chest Department's database were used to identify patients who had received a final diagnosis of PE, which was established according to the protocol previously published by Prospective Investigation of Pulmonary Embolism Diagnosis investigators. 9 Patients diagnosed with pneumonia were not included in the study.Patients who met the entry criteria were stratified into 2 groups as older (≥65 years old) or younger (<65 years old) patients. The risk factors for PE were defined as follows: 10,11 immobilization (at least 2 days' bed rest in the 2 weeks prior to admission), pregnancy (includes postpartum period within the 3 months prior to admission), estrogen or oral contraceptive use, stroke, obesity (body mass index >27 kg/m 2 ), trauma (within past 3 months), recent operation (within past 6 weeks), malignancy, recent history of long travel (>6 h within 1 week), chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD...

It was aimed to evaluate KL-6 glycoprotein levels to determine if it may be a diagnostic marker for the connective tissue diseases (CTDs) predicting CTD-related interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) (CTD-ILD) development and to examine if there was a difference between patients and healthy controls. The study included 113 patients with CTD (45 CTD without lung involvement, 68 CTD-ILD) and 45 healthy control subjects. KL-6 glycoprotein levels were analyzed with ELISA in patients and the control group. The relationship between KL-6 glycoprotein levels and CTD-ILD was assessed. In the comparison of all the groups in the study, significantly higher levels of KL-6 were determined in the CTD-ILD group than in either the CTD without pulmonary involvement group or the healthy control group (p < 0.008 and p < 0.001, respectively). There was no statistically significant difference between the KL-6 levels in the healthy control group and the CTD without pulmonary involvement group (p = 0.289). The KL-6 levels did not differ significantly according to the connective tissue diseases in the diagnostic groups (systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjögren's syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, mixed connective tissue disease, scleroderma, polymyositis/ dermatomyositis). In the healthy control group, there was a statistically significant difference between KL-6 levels in smokers and non-smokers. Smokers had significantly higher serum KL-6 levels compared with non-smokers (p < 0.05). There was no statistically significant difference between smoking status (pack-year) and serum KL-6 levels. There was no statistically significant correlation between serum KL-6 levels and time since diagnosis of CTD and CTD-ILD. The level of KL-6 as a predictive factor could be used to identify the clinical development of ILD before it is detected on imaging modality. Further prospective clinical studies are needed to define whether levels of KL-6 might have prognostic value or might predict progressive ILD.

Our results indicated that influenza vaccination rates are low in our whole HCP sample, with physicians having a slightly better rate than other HCP. Getting regularly vaccinated, having an educational level of college or higher, being a physician, and having a professional experience of more than 5 years positively affects the rate of future vaccinations. Physicians significantly more commonly recommended and prescribed the influenza vaccine than the pneumococcal vaccine. The most important reasons for getting vaccinated included having the opinion that the vaccine provided partial protection and intending to protect family members from infection. In our whole HCP sample, the reasons of not getting vaccinated against influenza included fear of vaccine's adverse effects and doubts about its efficacy and safety. Training meetings should be held for HCPs to underscore the importance of the influenza vaccine for protection of patients against the influenza.

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Polymorphism in plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 gene is suggested to be associated with an increased risk of venous thromboembolism. The aim of this study was to investigate the association of plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 gene polymorphism and its coexistence with factor-V-Leiden and prothrombin-20210 mutations in pulmonary thromboembolism. The authors investigated plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 4G/5G polymorphism, factor-V-Leiden, and prothrombin-20210 mutations in 143 pulmonary thromboembolism patients and 181 controls. Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 4G/4G, 4G/5G, and 5G/5G gene polymorphisms and prothrombin-20210 mutations were not different between cases and controls. Factor-V-Leiden mutation was present in 21.0% and 7.7% of the cases and controls, respectively, P = .001. Neither different plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 genotypes and 4G allele nor coexistence of the allele with factor-V-Leiden or prothrombin-20210 was associated with the risk of recurrence. As a result, plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 gene polymorphism or its concomitant presence with mentioned mutations was not found to be associated with increased risk for pulmonary thromboembolism or recurrent disease in this study.

These results showed that the incidence of ARF is high during the VAP episodes and that VAP developed with multidrug resistant pathogens and sepsis have an independent effect on the development of ARF.

Background: Specific prognostic models for intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) have short and simple features, whereas intensive care unit (ICU) severity scales include more complicated parameters. Even though newly developed ICU severity scales have disease-specific properties, they still lack radiologic parameters, which is crucial for ICH. Aims: To compare the performance of the Simplified Acute Physiology Score (SAPS) III, Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) IV, Logistic Organ Dysfunction Score (LODS), ICH, max-ICH, ICH functional outcome score (ICH-FOS), and Essen-ICH for prediction of in-hospital and one-year mortality of patients with ICH. Methods: A single-center analysis of 137 patients with ICH was conducted over 5 years. The performance of scoring systems was evaluated with receiver operating characteristic analysis. The independent predictors of one-year mortality were investigated with a multivariate logistic regression analysis. The SAPS-III score was calculated both in the emergency department (ED) and ICU. Results: Among the independent variables, the need for mechanical ventilation, hematoma volume, the presence of intraventricular hemorrhage, and hematoma originating from both lobar and nonlobar regions were found as the strongest predictor of one-year mortality. For in-hospital mortality, the discriminative power of SAPS-II, APACHE-IV, and LODS was excellent, and for SAPS-III-ICU and SAPS-III-ED, it was good. For one-year mortality, the discriminative power of SAPS-II, APACHE-IV, LODS, and SAPS-III-ICU was good, and for SAPS-III-ED, Essen-ICH, ICH, max-ICH, and ICH-FOS, it was fair. Conclusions: Although all three ICH-specific prognostic scales performed satisfactory results for predicting one-year mortality, the common intensive care severity scoring showed better performance. SAPS-III scores may be recommended for use in EDs after proper customization.